


I win

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/M, First Aid, Light Bondage, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, past toxic vrisrezi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 12:48:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20815424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: He closes his mouth, and then opens it again to say, “You look like roadkill.”She snorts, surprised and grinning. “Wow! What a thing to say to your girlfriend! John Egbert, local emotional abuser and terrible boyfriend!”This is normally the point where he’d give her a gentle shove and the argument would spiral on, but Terezi looks like if he shoves her right now he’ll actually hurt her, even if she’s grinning like she’s expecting him to do it anyways. Her stance is even braced a bit, he realizes, and doesn’t know what to do with that information.





	I win

John lies in the darkness of his bedroom, and wonders exactly what the fuck woke him up. He fumbles for his glasses and squints at the glowing red numbers of his alarm clock. It’s three in the morning. Ugh. What--

There’s a clattering sound from out in the living room, in the apartment that John lives in by himself. 

“Oh fuck,” he breathes, wide eyed, and then he does what he’s pretty sure he’s supposed to do and gets out of bed (ugh, cold) and picks up his bat. Well, what he probably should do is prop up his chair underneath the doorknob and call the cops, except he broke his phone last week and has been waiting to replace it after next month’s paycheck comes in and also he doesn’t just want to sit here while someone steals his precious TV or fruit gushers or something. 

He shoves his bedroom door open, shouting, “I’ve definitely called the cops!” 

“Wow, what a not suspicious way to phrase that! Great job, John.” 

At once, whatever Die Hard gravitas he’d summoned is dashed to pieces. He lowers his bat and gives Terezi’s silhouette an exasperated, indignant look. “Terezi, what the fuck? Why are you breaking into my apartment in the middle of the night?” The window that he’d closed before going to bed (because his dad didn’t raise no fool, which greatly saddened his jester preferences) is open. Something occurs to him. “Wait, this is the third floor.” Another epiphany, this one more triumphant than baffled. He gasps, theatrically scandalized. “Oh my god, did you just commit a crime?” 

“It’s not a crime if it’s an accident,” her voice rasps, somehow even raspier than usual. Did she eat something that wasn’t meant to be eaten again? 

“Manslaughter,” is his reply to that. And, “So your defense is that you accidentally climbed three stories of an apartment building from the outside and then accidentally picked my window lock and then crawled through? Terezi, I’m so sorry, but I don’t think that the judge is going to buy that.” 

“I didn’t pick it, blueberry,” she says with put on indulgent pity that smacks of leering smugness. “I just had to jab a knife into the crack and then jiggle it a bit.” 

Damn it. Stupid shitty locks. 

“My argument still stands--” he says stubbornly, and then her silhouette sways drunkenly and he drops his bat to go and steady her. His downstairs neighbour swears at him loudly through the floorboards, muffled and furious. 

She actually leans against him. It worries him immediately. It’s not supposed to happen that quickly and easily. He’s known her for six months, dated her for two, a weird relationship that isn’t anything like the ones he sees in movies but so much more incredibly fun for it. It’s still pretty new, but they’re working out a pattern, a rhythm. It doesn’t go like this. Her breaking into his apartment at three in the morning out of nowhere was less worrying. If someone told him that Terezi had done it to them he’d just nod and go ‘yeah that sounds like her’. 

“Geez, you should’ve just used the impaired judgement argument,” he grumbles softly, leading her towards the bathroom. He’s going to make her drink some water and then shove her to bed. He wonders if that means he should take the couch. It’d be the gentlemanly thing to do, which dad would approve of, and their whole deal is new enough that they haven’t done much yet, to the point that just assuming that they should share the bed doesn’t feel entirely comfortable. But on the other hand, it’s _ his _ bed and he’s pretty sure that she just fucked up the locks on his window. Why should he be the one to wake up with an aching back? “Drunk people can get away with a lot of shit.” 

She huffs a laugh, far more subdued than her usual cackle that she throws her head back for, revealing throat and teeth, ear splittingly sharp. “I really didn’t mean to come here,” she says, more quietly than normal. “I guess it was just… the closest place…” 

“I feel so special--” He tugs her the last few steps into the bathroom and turns on the lights. 

She smiles, and the fresh split in her lip reopens, teal blood running down her chin. “Your mouth is wide open. I can smell your morning breath, loser. Am I just that breathtaking? That’s kind of freaky, John, you’ve got some pretty weird suspicious tastes--” 

He closes his mouth, and then opens it again to say, “You look like _ roadkill.”  _

She snorts, surprised and grinning. “Wow! What a thing to say to your girlfriend! John Egbert, local emotional abuser and terrible boyfriend!” 

This is normally the point where he’d give her a gentle shove and the argument would spiral on, but Terezi looks like if he shoves her right now he’ll actually hurt her, even if she’s grinning like she’s expecting him to do it anyways. Her stance is even braced a bit, he realizes, and doesn’t know what to do with that information. 

“You’re an idiot,” is what he finally says. 

He calls her an idiot, but his tone of voice is off, not what it’s supposed to be. There’s no shit eating half amused half annoyed grin in it. She sniffs at the air to try and parse his expression, and promptly just snorts up some blood still hanging out in her nostrils from her last nosebleed thirty minutes ago in an alley. The world goes overwhelmingly teal as she grossly hacks and gags at it. 

And there he is, bracing her again, holding her up like she needs it and he’s happy to help. Or at least doesn’t mind, doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t smug at her like he’s won one over on her, isn’t even acting disappointed that he has to. Like she’s a let down of a kismesis. 

Of course he isn’t. He just wants someone to stick their tongue in his ear while cuddling and watching terrible movies, making him shriek and retaliate with  _ tickling,  _ of all things. 

“What the fuck even happened to you?” he asks. “Did you get run over by a  _ car?”  _

(“Vriska,” she says, definitely only breathless with the four block long chase and not the fact that she’s  _ here, _ back again after years of radio silence, laughing and running and holding a wallet that she absolutely waited to swipe from some nobody only when she was sure that Terezi would smell it, would hear their cry for help, someone stop that thief, and Terezi hadn’t even known for sure that she was _ alive _ before now. She’d gotten mixed up with the mob, cocky and reckless as always, and then she’d just  _ disappeared, _ without a single word of warning or reassurement. 

Kismesises aren’t supposed to reassure, though. So it’s not like she’s been wronged, even if it  _ feels _ like it. She presses it down. She already knows what Vriska would say to something as stupid as ‘you hurt my feelings’. 

“Me,” she says, casually leaning against the alley wall like she hadn’t been sprinting away from her only a moment ago, just a touch of suppressed gasping for air in her voice. She’s smiling, confident and self assured as always. She can smell the sharp white crescent of it in the darkness of an alley at two in the morning. 

There’s so many words inside of her that want to come out that they all clog up on the way out of her throat. She could just pick one, any single one thing to say, but when she does she can’t figure out a way to phrase it that doesn’t make her sound  _ weak.  _

And being weak in front of Vriska Serket has never been an option. 

“A poor concerned citizen informed me that he has lost his wallet,” she says instead, like they’ve seen each other only a few days ago. Like there weren’t weeks of growing unease at her sudden absence, months of searching so determined that she didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, almost lost her job. Giving up on her as a lost cause, the great and terrible Vriska Serket reduced to an anonymous corpse rotting in a cold ditch somewhere, had been the most difficult thing in her life. Worse than losing her mom, worse than losing her eyes, worse than passing the bar. Somehow, she grins, wide and toothy and mocking. Just like old times. Her chest feels hollow, and the alley reeks of sour things. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen it, have you? Give a helpless blind girl a hand.” 

Vriska tosses the wallet between her hands and laughs, playful and mean and painfully familiar, like a ghost come back to haunt her. Except she has new scars and an eyepatch that hadn’t been there before and before this morning Terezi hadn’t thought about her in  _ weeks. _ Not for more than in passing for months. 

“Hmm, maybe,” she says coyly. “But only if she’s a tough one.” 

Which is an invitation to the next step of their usual song and dance, old and dusty like a fading memory. It’s making Terezi feel like she must be dreaming, with how Vriska keeps acting like the gap of time never even happened, surreal and wrong in her own skin. 

She doesn’t know how to respond, so she just falls into the old routine. 

They fight.) 

She definitely _ feels _ like she got hit by a car. “Yes,” she decides. It’s much simpler than reality. 

“What the fuck?” John asks. “Did you catch the license plate-- wait.” 

She laughs at him, and then has to stop to cough for a bit. Her ribs  _ ache.  _ Vriska had not held back. Of course she hadn’t. She never does. “Ableist,” she wheezes between coughs, determined. 

He gently leads her to sit down on the closed lid of his loadgaper, and then starts rummaging around for what she’s willing to bet is his first aid kit. 

“You make  _ way _ more tasteless blind jokes than me.” 

“Wow, John, so suddenly I’m not allowed to make jokes to cope with my own grim and depressing life?” 

“I--”

“I’m dating a goober like you, I need a way to laugh about it all.” 

He thwacks her gently with a hand towel, pointedly at the arm that she’s favoring so that it won’t hurt. “I’m the one in this relationship who deserves hugs and therapy over here.” 

When he opens the bottle of disinfectant, the smell of it is like a sharp slap to the nostrils. She grimaces and leans back. “Debatable.” 

“Fine,” he says, and he sounds even softer now. “We both deserve hugs and therapy.” 

“John,” she says. “If you try and hug me right now--” 

“Pfft,” he interrupts. “And get blood on my best Ghostbusters t-shirt? Are you crazy?” 

She promptly spits blood onto her hand and shoves it in his direction, aimed at his torso. He shouts and grabs at her wrist, shoving it away so that it ends up groping his face instead. The downstairs neighbour starts shouting again. Terezi tries to bite back her snickers, because it really does hurt if she laughs too hard. 

“What’s the matter? I thought you  _ liked _ me? Let me touch you, blueberry, come on--” 

He ends up tying her wrists behind her back with the hand towel. He’s got his arms around her, knotting the towel, and she’s got her face smushed up against his thick neck, smearing teal onto his skin, and she could definitely bite down on him right now. But she’s hurt and she’s tired and she doesn’t want to have another fight. With Vriska, that wouldn’t be excuse enough to let her weasel out of it. With John, it is. It’s as simple as that. She closes her eyes and breathes him in, pretending like she hasn’t gone limp and resigned-relaxed. 

He pulls away, and she makes herself tiredly bear her own weight. Tests his knots, pulling at her wrists. Hey, she doesn’t want to get into another knockdown fight tonight, but that doesn’t mean that she’s going to go totally easy on him either. She pulls her lips up into a crooked smirk. 

“So you  _ can _ tie your own shoelaces, huh?” 

“I told you, I just like vans!” he snaps back, adorably peeved. She can smell the flush slowly rising up underneath his dark cheeks, like chocolate with a cherry filling. Mm… she wants to _ bite _ him. But in that soft, playful way he likes. 

He gets to disinfecting her wounds. She could wriggle out of the way, kick out at him, but with the plausible deniability of her wrists tied up behind her back, she finds that its easier to just… not. Let him take care of her, like she’s got no choice. It’s not what a kismesis should do, but it’s been a long fucking night. 

If you tilt your head to the side and squint, you could look at the whole situation like this: Terezi broke into John’s place because it was close and convenient, plus, it annoyed him. John found her, pushed her into his bathroom, tied her up while she (not so sincerely) struggled, and is now doing whatever he wants to her against her will, which just so happens to be tender first aid. That’s appropriately pitch, isn’t it? It’s not like she came here because she knows that this is somewhere that she’s safe and she was hurt and didn’t know where else to go, and it’s not like he’s taking care of her now. She’s bothering him, and he’s pushing her around. 

He smooths a large band aid over a deep scratch on her arm, so terribly careful with her, and she can’t make herself swallow the half truth. She surges forward and kisses him, catching him by surprise, all messy sloppy tongue and the leftover taste of blood. After a long moment, he curls his fingers into the hair at the back of her head and pulls her away.  _ That’s _ more like it. That’s what a kismesis should be like. Bloody kisses and hair pulling. 

He gives her a half flustered, half baffled look. “Really?” he asks. 

She grins at him. “If you make me come first, I’ll go to a clinic.” 

He pauses, actually considers it. Narrows his eyes. Smiles, in that challenging mischievous way that makes something in her stomach swoop with fondness and anticipation and  _ what a goober.  _

“Deal,” he says, and then he’s got his hands on the back of her thighs and is lifting her up in one smooth movement. She wraps her legs around his waist and laughs, throwing her head back. “But we’re not doing it on the  _ toilet.”  _

“Coward,” she insults, and then leans in towards him to lick into his mouth, nibble carefully at his lip as he walks them towards his bedroom, slow and stumbling in the dark as she makes herself as much of a distraction as possible. Despite her best efforts, he doesn’t trip or drop her. He makes it to his bedroom, and sets her down on his bed, turning on his dim lamp instead of the harsh lights. It makes everything taste slightly tinged with warm yellow, the corners of every color softer instead of sharp. He kneels down at the floor by her feet and starts tugging of her shoes. 

“Going to kiss my boots, John?” she teases, and her voice comes out too friendly, too soft. 

“You wish,” he retorts, and rolls off her socks as well. “I’m just not letting you lie in my bed while wearing  _ shoes.”  _

She places her now bare foot on his face and shoves him away. 

“Ack!” he splutters, disgusted, and rears up onto his feet, towering over her. That swoop again, low in her belly. “You’re so gross!” 

“You were asking for it.” 

He snorts derisively and leans down to unbutton her pants. _ Oh. _ There’s something inside of her that heats up by two degrees at the realization that John’s going to have to undress her, with her hands tied up. That she’ll have to  _ let _ herself be manhandled for sex to happen. She squirms, and he huffs like she’s just being difficult for the sake of being uncooperative. He pulls her pants down her hips and legs, his thumbs hooking her underwear along for the ride. 

There’s translucent teal smeared along her inner thighs, eager pre release. He throws her clothes away over her shoulder and leans down to kiss her again, hand crawling up her shirt to caress her skin. He won’t be able to take off her shirt without untying her, and she really, really doesn’t want to be untied. Not that she’s going to admit to that. She leans up into his touch, his kiss, and works a leg between his, pressing up against his crotch. He’s hard. He breaks away from the kiss to shudder hot breath against her face, caught off guard. She revels in the rising warm, eager scent of them trapped between their bodies. 

“You’re still wearing an awfully large amount of clothes,” she comments.  _ “Shy?”  _

“As if!” he responds, as if he hasn’t been naked around her before. He sits up to shuck his shirt off, and shimmies out of his loose sleeping pants. Mm,  _ much _ better. She leans up to lick a long stripe up his chest, delicious dark brown with red hiding underneath his warm skin. John shivers. He always acts so hilariously flustered whenever she licks him, but not here, not when they’re like this. He acts even better then. Like her licking him is natural, and tantalizing. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, and falls down on her, his warm weight pressing her into the giving matress, and then his strong arms are around her and rolling her over and suddenly he’s on his back on the bed and she’s lying on top of him. His hips herk up against her hip, a needy instinctive movement. She grins with all of her sharp teeth as her bulge slides out in an eager, sloppy rush to grope towards John’s cock, to wrap itself around it and  _ squeeze _ like a loving boa constrictor. John’s back arches and he makes a strangled, breathless sound. She grinds her hips against his helplessly, pleasure washing over her. 

His hands are on her hips, though, and for some reason he’s urging her upwards, away. She growls lightly at him, nips at his jaw. 

“Let me fuck you,” he says, soft and sincere in the darkness of his room, and she stops, considers it. 

“I will deign to let you experience the great pleasure,” she says. 

“Oh, fuck you,” he says with a wry smile, shoving her lightly at the shoulder, and then she’s sitting up in his lap, her bulge stubbornly holding onto as much of John’s dick as it can. John’s breathing is unsteady, but he reaches out to carefully unwind Terezi’s bulge from his dick with his hands. It squirms around his fingers instead, and he gives it a gentle squeeze that makes Terezi’s useless eyes roll back into her head, a low hoarse noise escaping her. 

John helpfully positions her while sparks fire off behind her eyes, and before she knows it he’s slowly sliding up into her. She starts swearing. John bites his lip, his eyes squeezed shut, but he slides her down slow and steady as a machine onto his cock. Once he’s fully sheathed inside her, they both take a long moment to just breathe. Terezi’s bulge squirms desperately against her stomach, between her thighs, circling where she and John are connected. 

John reaches out a hand to curl his fingers around her lonely bulge again, slick and needy, and with the other he keeps her steady in his lap as he gives a shallow, tentative thrust up into her. She arches her back and shudders out a breath, feeling whole. The pleasure twitching along her nerves mixes strangely but  _ deliciously _ with the bruises covering her body. Like the pleasure of a rough fuck, but  _ better, _ because she knows that she won’t have to fight tooth and nail to make sure that she won’t get hurt _ too  _ bad. She never knew that it could feel so good. 

Terezi should dig her claws into John, something, anything, but she _ can’t,  _ and it’s such a deep relief that she feels dizzy with it. 

“Pail me already,” she demands, and his next thrust is deeper, stronger. She bounces with it and gasps, and then grinds down into him in return in hungry encouragement. 

John swears again, and then starts fucking her in earnest. The bed creaks, and groans start escaping her, and her bulge earnestly tries to  _ strangle  _ John’s fingers. Oh this is good, so good, so right. Her skin and muscles ache with pain but pleasure swoops low in her gut, and she’s tied up and can’t do anything that she’s too tired to do even though she should, and John is warm and adorable annoying and so stupid and so trusting and  _ safe.  _

She follows his rhythm, fast snapping hips eager for friction and connection and release, and loses herself in it, lets herself forget all of the bad, exhausting things. John doesn’t take advantage of her losing herself in the sex entirely. He doesn’t press down on her bruises, doesn’t take what he wants. He doesn’t try to  _ win _ this. What a failure of a kismesis. What an endearing fucking idiot. 

He snaps his hips up into her, buried root deep into her nook, and makes a soft, broken noise into the crook of his arm as he hides his face, shaking and overwhelmed. She breathes through his orgasm, inhaling his ecstasy, his sweet salty sweat. She clenches down on him mercilessly as he comes, and his hand closes desperately around her bulge like he’s looking for a handhold. With a cracked cry, teal spills out from her nook, soaking into fabric and the creases of their skin. 

She shakily props herself up on her knees, and let's John’s softening dick slide out of her before she collapses on top of him. She knows that she’s a light but boney weight. He wraps his arms around her anyways, rolls over and tucks her in close to him. She’s tied up. She’s helpless to resist. She buries her face in the crook of his neck and hums, content. 

(While Terezi’s gagging on her own nosebleed, Vriska finally gains the upper hand and pins her against the wall. She smiles with both her own and Terezi’s blood on her teeth; there had been biting. 

Now, Terezi can feel down to her very bones, is the time for the next step. Time for Vriska to lean in for a biting, searing kiss-- 

Without thinking about it, Terezi turns her face out of the way. Vriska freezes, her lips a centimeter away from her cheek. 

“Excuse me?” she asks. 

“I have a kismesis,” is what Terezi says, and she hadn’t known that was what she was going to say until it was out of her mouth, and she realizes that she  _ does _ have a kismesis. She hadn’t even remembered him until now. 

_ “What?” _ Vriska says, and then before she’s even had time to respond, “But they’re not as good as  _ me.”  _

She says it with stone cold confidence, despite having no idea who said kismesis even is. She admired that confidence so much. Maybe still does. It doesn’t matter, she realizes, with heady realization. 

“He’s better than you,” she says, and she realizes that that’s true as she speaks it as well. 

Vriska makes an angry, scoffing noise, offended, her hands bunched up in Terexi’s collar, like what she’s saying is ridiculous. 

It is ridiculous. She’s known Vriska for as long as she can remember. Their relationship is so deep, so meaningful that it is undeniably a part of who she is. And she’s going to throw it all away when given back to her for some dinky casual fun thing she’s got going on with a buck toothed nerd she’s been kissing on for less than seven weeks? 

Yes. Because Joh makes her happy, and Vriska doesn’t. It’s that simple. Adrenaline rushes through her veins at the thought. Vriska doesn’t make her happy. She never has. Sure, she makes her feel alive, but not  _ happy.  _ She feels fucking miserable. And does she even make her feel alive? Or does she just make herself feel so sharp and colorful and fast and brutal and harsh and incredible that the rest of life feels bleaker in comparison? 

John doesn’t make her thrum with electricity, doesn’t make himself feel like the only important thing in the world. He makes her glow with a soft, content happiness that lasts throughout the day. Vriska is a sword to sharpen herself against, and John makes her feel soft and trusting and playful, kind. And is that so fucking wrong? It’s not a proper pitch romance, not a brutal and dramatic rivalry that takes lives. It’s just gentle bickering that makes her feel so comfortable and simply happy. 

Terezi Pyrope, soft. How shameful. She doesn’t fucking care. She’s shameless. 

“You lost your chance, Serket,” she says, and shoves her away. “There  _ are  _ consequences. Go and find someone else to mess with.” 

There’s a long pause. And then, “With the wallet? Are you _ sure?”  _

She says it like it’s an irresistible lure, like she  _ knows _ that Terezi’s going to give in. 

She clenches her jaw. “Keep it.” 

And she turns around and walks away. If some stranger’s wallet is the price she has to pay to convince Vriska Serket to stay out of her life forever, then that’s a price that she’s willing to pay. She doesn’t bother hiding her limp on the way out. Some people’s opinions aren’t worth being bothered over.)

“I win,” she breathes against his skin. 

“Oh, goddamnit,” he says. “I forgot. Uh, what do you get if you win, now again?” 

She lets her eyes slip closed, inhales him, and goes soft and pliant in his arms. Her soft, human kismesis, too kind and playful by half, and absolutely perfect for her. “We just stay where we are and sleep in.” 

“Oh, that’s not too--” 

“And then we only watch crime procedurals for the rest of the week.” 

“Fuck!”

She snickers, and eventually falls asleep. 


End file.
